Toxic micro/nano particles removal in water via triboelectric nanogenerator

Herein, a new strategy for micro/nanoparticles removal in water using a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is demonstrated. Removal process based on electrophoretic force can extract particles from water by its zeta potential due to the electric fields generated by the TENG, in other words, higher performance TENG removes more particles. High-performance TENG based on a three-dimensional porous-pyramid polydimethylsiloxane shows a power output nearly three times higher than that of a flat film-based TENG. With the proposed TENG, the removal rate is 21.4%, which is 5.6 times higher than that for the flat TENG (3.8%). By measuring the coverage area of the particles attached to the electrode, it was found that the removal of particles was significantly affected by the output voltage and operation time of the TENG. A TENG-driven self-powered electrophoretic system that removes sub-micron nanoparticles of polystyrene, CdSe/CdZnS, ZnO, and SiO2 is successfully demonstrated.